


Closer to God

by Mosca



Series: Five Worlds Without Shrimp [4]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-09 11:46:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lilah's living the dream and dreaming she's dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closer to God

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this to my Livejournal in March 2007.
> 
> k beta read this, and Anna provided fashion advice. I wrote this for Femslash '07 for Sheepfairy. The title is from a Nine Inch Nails song.
> 
> The stories in "Five Worlds Without Shrimp" are all set in different universes, and each one stands alone. Each imagines a world in which the events of AtS are all about the journey of a secondary character.

In her dreams she hears the snap of her neck and there's a delirious white light, her brain clutching for oxygen. She wakes up gasping what if, what if, it was a close call there, the closest. Fingernails are a powerful weapon, stick them in a demon-possessed former Valley Girl's eyes when she thinks she's sneaking up on you, she'll go blind just long enough for you to run. "Bring an axe," she told Wesley. "Bring a gun." He brought them and they killed the girl, but murder didn't bring them closer together. Cordelia had been his friend. He knew what he was killing and still he was killing her. He was generous, harboring Lilah in the Hyperion until she was out of danger, but she couldn't hide any more than she could leave town. Not in her contract. 

So here's her big office and her shiny nameplate, her floor-to-ceiling vampire-safe windows and her cabinet of mystical doodads. Here's her personal secretary, hired when she came in with a short resume and an eleventh-century birthday. Not much work out there for an ex-demon trying to get out of the saving-the-world business. Anya's brusque on the phone, but Lilah has defined her job description as getting people to leave her alone, so it's a sweet little marriage of convenience they have going. Not quite marriage. But Lilah would never hire a secretary she didn't want to fuck, and she would never let such a pornographic imbalance of power slip through her fingers.

Lilah's calls are going to voice mail. Her secretary is lying naked on top of her desk, the mahogany polished so bright that the creamy reflection of her skin surrounds her like a halo. Anya loves sex, will take it whenever and however she can get it, will knock on the door at four in the afternoon to hand Lilah tomorrow's schedule and before Lilah can say thank you, Anya is unzipping her dress. Lilah should have thought of it long ago. Demons, current or former -- so much easier in bed. No white lies, no romance, only the most literal statements of desire. Lilah started out with tenderness, but Anya didn't even want that: cunnilingus bores her, fingers aren't enough. What she wants is the big glass dildo, the one that will split a girl wide open. Anya is such a spindly creature, it looks like that might actually happen sometimes. But she stays in one piece, begging for harder and deeper.

It's getting to the point where Lilah wouldn't mind a little foreplay once in a while. Not that she has time for a relationship. Not that she ever has.

She goes home, eats her nightly takeout, and goes to bed. In her dreams, there are hands around her throat. Her spine snaps. Wesley stands before her body with an axe in his hands, and she tells him everything she never got a chance to say to him. She wakes up and dials his number from memory, but his phone's been disconnected. She goes back to sleep and dies again five more times before her alarm clock breaks the cycle. 

When she gets to work, Anya follows her into her office. "I need more money," Anya says, taking her top off.

"You're asking me for a raise?" Lilah says.

"An employee's pay should reflect the quality of her work," Anya says. "Mine doesn't. So I need a raise." She stands with her hands clasped behind her back, her nipples peaking in the chill of the air conditioning. "Thank you."

Lilah leaves her suit behind her in a pile on the floor. It's harsh treatment for Dior, but that's what dry cleaning is for. In her underwear and heels, she says, "How much do you want?"

"Forty dollars an hour would be commensurate," Anya says. She comes up close to Lilah and traces a circle around her neck. Where a scar should be, Lilah thinks, and although it doesn't make any sense, she can't shake it.

That night, she dreams of Gavin Park. "Put your scarf on," he says, "we have to go downtown." She almost asks him why she needs the scarf, but she remembers, there is a delicate seam between her head and her body. That's what happens when your ex-boyfriend chops your head off to make sure you don't rise as a vampire. Dream logic. 

None of the clothes in her closet are her own. She has a drawer full of scarves she wouldn't quite buy. She ties one on to hold her head in place, and as she fastens the knot she finds herself in the Wolfram & Hart lobby. She's supposed to give a tour to Angel and his funky bunch, to offer them the opportunity to take over. She's supposed to give him her job. Of course she is. Because she's dead, and dead people can't run law firms.

She shows Angel around; he's skeptical. Wesley tries to save her again, setting fire to her contract. She tries to stop him, to explain that everything's fine, she didn't really die, but the contract replaces itself and her mouth forms a lie about hellfire. Angel takes the job; she wakes up. She touches her neck. There's no scar there, but there should be. She should be dead. She shouldn't be here. 

She picks up the nightstand phone and dials Gavin's number. He ought to be dead, himself, but she's got a feeling he'll answer. When he does (and she can tell she's woken him), she demands, "What dimension am I in, and what am I doing here?"

"Where do you think you are?" he says.

"I thought I was still alive," she says. "But I'm wrong, aren't I?"

"You died fighting for the forces of good," he says. "This poses a problem for the Senior Partners."

She's silent for a long time. Her mind feels blank. Gavin doesn't say anything; he's probably not allowed to. "I have everything I ever wanted," she whispers, hanging up the phone. She goes to the bathroom and stares into the mirror. Not-Cordelia snapped her neck, and Wesley cut off her head, and that's how she died and went to Heaven. There ought to be a scar there, a line dividing mind from body, the line that's always been there anyway. She takes out a tube of lipstick in a color she's never liked, and she draws a ring around her neck. It looks ridiculous, but it feels right. She stands there and breathes, fingers on her pulse, her pretend body pretending to be alive.

The lipstick will stain her pillowcase. She washes it off and goes back to bed. Asleep, she dreams of an emotional reunion with a pet hamster she had as a kid. She loved that hamster when she was too little to realize that when you love things, they die.

At work the next day, stripped down to her Manolos for her lunch break, Lilah shoves Anya's back against the window glass. She rides Anya's thin, flexible fingers, clawing her shoulders to keep herself upright. When she looks at it from the right angle, Heaven is pretty much one long orgasm. Endless pleasure, her punishment for one moment of weakness. She moans and squeezes around Anya's fist, coming and coming.


End file.
